Tribal hatred thwarts peace hopes in Burundi

By Adrian Blomfield in Bujumbura

12:01AM BST 01 May 2003

After 10 years of civil war and four decades of ethnic hatred, Burundi passed a milestone yesterday when the country's elite Tutsi minority handed over power to the Hutu majority in only the second peaceful transition of Burundi's history.

But a ceremony of pomp and optimism held to mark the assumption of the transitional presidency by Domitien Ndayizeye happened against the backdrop of some of the worst violence the country has seen since the war began. The people of Burundi are so accustomed to the sound of shelling and gunfire they call the noise of battle la musique.

Any of the foreign dignitaries, among them Nelson Mandela, who believed a new era of peace was dawning only needed to look up into the lush, green mountains that surround the capital, Bujumbura, to be persuaded otherwise. Last week Hutu rebels launched their heaviest assault on Bujumbura in years, raining down rockets and mortar bombs on the heart of the city.

Between five and 26 people were killed. It came despite the signing of a ceasefire accord between the country's main rebel movement, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy, and the government in December.

As ever it is civilians who bear the brunt of the attacks. They make up most of the 300,000 people who have been killed since 1993, when the rebellion broke out after Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was assassinated months after winning the country's first and only democratic elections.

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The people of Bujumbura live in constant fear, never sure when the "music" will strike up again. While there have been frequent attacks on the suburbs in the past, the rebels have never hit the centre of the capital with such ferocity before.

Belgian expatriates, Asian businessmen and many of the Tutsi elite have fled the city. Some aid agencies have pulled out and others are operating with a skeleton staff. On the outskirts traffic is virtually non-existent.

Aid workers talk wistfully of their time in such trouble-spots as Liberia and Sierra Leone. "This is the spookiest place on earth," one veteran said.

The rebels remain implacably opposed to the peace accord, mediated by Mr Mandela, which set up a three-year transitional government under which a Hutu would take over from President Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi, after 18 months.

The rebels accuse Mr Ndayizeye and his moderate Hutu colleagues of selling out to the Tutsis.

"Today the fighting goes on throughout the country and we will continue to fight and protect ourselves," said Galase Ndabirabe, a spokesman for the rebel FDD, by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Hutus make up 85 percent of the population but have been marginalised by a Tutsi regime of virtual apartheid which locked them out of universities and well paid jobs, trapping them in a cycle of poverty. Many of them support the FDD.

Hutus have been victims of army atrocities too, none more so than in the eastern province of Ruyigi, on the front line of the war. In November the army massacred 173 civilians accused of sheltering rebels. Two officers were found guilty and sentenced to four months in prison for "failure to obey orders".